Half-Past Dawn (32 page)

“He was paid off.” Jack felt as if he was arguing with a child. “Do you want to just get to the point? They have obviously fed you a bunch of lies and are playing you.”

“OK.” Ryan sat up, composed himself. “Jack, at seven this evening, they—”

“Who’s they?” Jack asked.

“The FBI guy outside—Tierney—he said you walked into the lobby of the Tombs, alone. Talked to an Officer Knoll and went downstairs. They say Charlie Brooks buzzed you in … and then …”

Jack felt his mind slipping, realizing the inference. “That’s not true.” Although Jack tried to avoid it, there was desperation in his voice.

“Jack—”

“I didn’t kill Charlie, dammit. He was a friend. I didn’t kill those cops. The only man I shot was the man who struck Mia and who was about to shoot me. There’s got be video footage,” Jack pleaded.

“I didn’t see any video. I did see pictures of the aftermath. It looks like a war zone.”

“Yeah, and Cristos was right in the middle of it, the cause of it. Pretty horrific work for a dead guy.”

“Jack—”

“Did they speak to Larry Knoll, the guard at the desk? He let us through security. What about the lobby cameras? Surely they got Cristos on video.”

“I asked the same thing,” Ryan said. “They say the cameras were somehow interfered with, nothing but static. And Larry, the guy at the desk, is in a world of trouble for letting you out of the building.”

“What about the cops who arrested me? They saw him on the roof.”

Ryan shook his head with sympathy. “Just you, Jack. No one else was on that roof but you.”

Jack’s head throbbed. He closed his eyes, trying to find something, anything, that would convince his friend of his sanity.

Ryan took a moment, forming his words. “With such a tragedy befalling Mia, when hit with such trauma, sometimes the mind runs and hides. It plays tricks on us. With the accident, hitting your head, it probably jostled the tumor. That is why the colors were brighter, why you could hear things …” Ryan turned on his bedside manner. “And it made you see things. “

“And you saw the tumor,” Jack said facetiously. “You saw that it moved? I don’t recall any X-ray since I got here. A week ago, you said it wouldn’t have an effect for several months, and yet in less than a week, I’m having full-blown hallucinations?”

“No, I haven’t taken an MRI, but I know what I’m going to find. This isn’t you I’m talking to. There are some things you’ve said … they don’t make sense.”

“Bullshit! You know me, Ryan. I didn’t just go through what I went through imagining things. I saw Griffin, I went into the depths of the Tombs with Cristos—in flesh and blood, not some ghost—and his three guys. I was nearly killed trying to get that case.”

“And where is that case, Jack?” Ryan’s words sounded like a summation of all of the facts, bringing his point home.

Jack thought that no matter what he said, they had already tried and convicted him; they were going to rule that he was temporarily, if not permanently, insane. But with every question, Jack’s self-doubt
grew. He didn’t remember how he got home, what happened after the accident. There were holes in his memory. And the conversation with his father kept ringing in his head.
Reality is all a matter of perspective
… and no one was seeing his perspective.

“The cops who arrested you said you were alone on that rooftop, that there was no case.”

Jack said nothing.
Reality is all a matter of perspective
…

“You gave it up to a man who is dead,” Ryan said.

“Jack.” Emily finally spoke. “Was there ever really an evidence case, or could this all have been in your imagination?”

“Ryan, please.” Jack began to beg. “You’ve known me forever. If I can’t convince you … please, for Mia …”

“OK. “Ryan looked at Jack, his face troubled, his hand shaking. “You’re right. We’re jumping to conclusions, moving too fast. Let’s slow down—no, better yet, let’s start over. Tell me what happened when you woke up this morning. Take your time.”

Jack inhaled as he smiled at his friend. “OK. I woke up, tired, groggy, struggled out of bed as I usually do. Walked downstairs. I was parched. I grabbed a Coke, looked around for the paper. It wasn’t there. Grabbed it off the porch. Went back to the kitchen. Checked the garage, noticed the Tahoe was gone, assumed Mia took it since she left me the Audi—”

“Did you see the headline?”

“No, not yet.”

“And the girls weren’t home?”

“They’re at my mom’s.”

“Good,” Ryan said. “Remember—details.”

“Right.” Jack smiled “I went upstairs—oh, wait. I let the dog out when I got the paper.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, actually.” Jack was thinking, trying to keep order to things in his mind. “Actually, I played a bit on the kitchen floor with Fruck before I grabbed the Coke.”

“With Fruck?” Ryan asked as he nodded.

“Yeah, I’d assumed Mia fed him. I let him out when I grabbed the paper.” Jack refocused. “So, I went upstairs—”

“How long have you had Fruck?”

Jack smiled. “God, I don’t know. Years …”

“Jack.” Ryan spoke quietly, his heart breaking with every word. “Fruck was your dog when you were a kid. I was with you when he got hit by the garbage truck. He died in your arms in the driveway … you were seventeen.”

Jack’s head began to throb. He looked around the room, feeling as if he needed to hold on to something.

Ryan stood up and motioned for Emily to walk with him to the corner of the room. They became lost in a conversation of whispers and soft tones. Ryan passed her each of the four files, one by one. Jack’s hearing had grown more acute, but he couldn’t make out their words as they nodded to each other before walking back his way.

“Jack,” Ryan said in a calm, reassuring voice, “Emily is a psychiatrist, the best in her field. I respect her opinion as much as her experience.”

“Jack.” Emily spoke softly. “You are going to be moved to a special hospital where we can better care for your state of mind. You can undergo radiation treatment which may alleviate the tumor’s impact on your brain function, but until that time, you are a danger to yourself and anyone around you.”

“What?” Jack exploded. “Ryan, don’t do this! Please! Mia is out there … you’ve got to get me out of here. Don’t do it for me. Do it for her.”

“I know. My heart is breaking for you, Jack. I can’t even imagine …” Ryan took a slow, measured breath, trying desperately to calm himself. The last five minutes since he’d walked back into the room were leading up to this moment. He had waited too long already but still had trouble finding the way to broach it. “Forgive me for not telling you when I came back into the room, but we needed to judge your state of mind.”

“Forgive you for what?”

“They found her, Jack,” Ryan said almost in a whisper.

Jack closed his eyes, a sense of relief filling him, washing away his fear. He truly didn’t care what they did to him, as long as she was safe. He no longer cared about dawn or whether he lived or died. Love was such a simple thing, a thing that if truly felt and experienced compelled one to give everything he had to the one he loved. He let his anger slip away. None of it mattered, as long as Mia was safe to get home to their girls, to hold and protect them forever.

But when Jack opened his eyes, he saw a tear on Ryan’s cheek, Ryan, the one who was not known for emotion, the one whose wife had called heartless on more than one occasion.

“Jack, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Mia’s dead.”

F
RIDAY
, 11:15
P.M
.

F
RANK HAD SPENT THE
last hour chasing down every friend, contact, and enemy he had in the New York City Police Department to find where Jack had been taken. He had lost Jack once he exited his car with the Suburban in pursuit. They had both disappeared up 48th Street.

Frank thought of taking up the chase on foot, but Jack was long gone, and he knew he would have no chance of finding him. He quickly set to work changing his front left tire, which the men in the Suburban had shot out, finishing in pit-stop time of two minutes. He was thankful for his intense workouts and large forearms as he muscled through the process but admitted that he felt his age as he climbed back into the car with an ache in his back and a sore shoulder. He had quickly started up the car and headed up 48th Street, where Jack had disappeared. He imagined that he sought refuge within the sea of tourists who prowled Broadway on a Friday night, a far better place to hide than in some isolated hole in the wall.

He raced west toward Seventh Avenue and couldn’t believe his eyes as he saw Jack carried out of on office building by three cops. Unconscious, his weight taxing the young police officers, he was
stuffed into the back of a police cruiser and sped out of there. Frank took up pursuit and was quickly foiled by the slow-moving traffic out of Times Square, but the cop car managed to bob, weave, and vanish to who knows where. He flipped on his scanner, but there was no mention of the goings-on on West 48th Street. Frank knew that Jack was under VIP care, radio silence on whatever had happened, allowing the officers and the department to sort through what to do with the arrest of the city’s DA.

Frank had called in favors, had called in chits, had called upon captains and rookies, but no one had heard even a rumor about Jack being arrested. There was fractional chatter about an occurrence at the Tombs, but that was being handled by the FBI, where Frank knew he wouldn’t be afforded even a pleasantry. He had called out to Riker’s Island but knew that they would never take Jack there, into the heart of the enemy, whose population would flay the skin from Jack’s body before he was even placed in a cell. He called the central jail at the Tombs, but no one had been brought in during the last hour even anonymously. Frank headed downtown and circled back to the entrance to the Tombs, where he found the FBI poring over the lobby, dusting for prints, noting and cataloguing the bullet slugs and the scars they’d left in the marble walls and floors. Frank couldn’t believe what he saw and was amazed that Jack had made it out of there alive. He had searched for Larry Knoll but was told Larry was being debriefed by the FBI at a different location. The wall of silence on the matter was impenetrable.

He had been so furious with Jack for leaving him, for slipping into the Tombs. He had no idea what prompted Jack’s singular drive to get downstairs without him or any real idea of what had happened. He had only glimpsed the mythical box that Jack had spoken of, as he clung tightly to it while they raced up the FDR. And he did not get even a glimpse of its contents, let alone a mention of what was inside.

Frank was loved and respected by the NYPD, both top brass and lowly rookies, but he wasn’t about to get any information from
his former colleagues; no one knew a thing. He had been a cop for twenty-five years. Even though he’d retired, he still considered himself one and would until they day he died. He thought back on his career and similar situations—the arrests of movies stars, the senator from Arkansas found unconscious at the Four Seasons with his battered wife next to him, and the incident twenty years ago involving the former mayor’s son, the underage girl, needles, and guns. He thought about each situation and the embarrassment it created, not just for the individual but for law enforcement, the country, and the city administration, all of whom sought legal, PR, and practical advice before informing the media and the world of a respected and loved VIP going off the rails. And the pieces fell into place …

Frank knew where Jack was.

J
ACK LAY ON
the riverbank, his body broken and wet, the sound of the rushing river heavy in his ear, his body and mind enveloped by the darkness of night. Moonlight danced off the muddy shore, the wet leaves of the surrounding woods. And there was a presence beside him. The man who had emerged from the woods, cloaked in the shadows of night, knelt behind his head, just beyond the periphery of his vision.

An incredible pain coursed through Jack’s body, his head pounded, his face was dotted with multiple stings, his chest throbbed on the left side, and his torso felt as if a vise was closing around it.

And a voice rose, a quiet chanting, a prayer uttered in the soft whispers of a foreign tongue. But somehow, despite the fact that he spoke no language beyond English, Jack understood the words that poured from the man’s mouth.

“In between life and death, between the deepest dark of night and the first rays of dawn, in that moment where we begin to drift up from sleep to wakefulness, is where anything is possible, Jack.”

The man reached over and drew Jack’s naked arm to him. Under the rays of moonlight, the man withdrew a quill from his pocket, a bottle of ink from the other. He dipped the quill in the dark brown ink and began to write. His hand was that of an artist, his focus and demeanor those that of a wise man.

“You can still save her, Jack,” the man whispered as he wrote, “but time is slipping away and will soon fall through your fingers, where all will be forever lost.”

J
ACK’S EYES FLASHED
open, and he desperately tried to recapture the fading thread of the dream, trying to hold on to the answers that floated up from his memory while he slept. He lay in the hospital bed, the strap around his chest reaffixed, his arms tethered back down. He was filled with such agony, such grief, such confusion.

Everything he held as reality had slipped away. Mia was everything, his better half, his lover, his best friend, and she was dead.

He reviewed the last fifteen hours in his mind, every conversation, every action he took. It had all seemed so real. Talking to Jimmy Griffin … he couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t have been an imposter. He had not set Jack up. He was her friend. He didn’t lead him down some rabbit hole. He merely said that her salvation lay with the fate of the evidence case.

And Cristos, he was not some illusion, some spirit come back to haunt him. He was flesh and blood. The bullets were real, not dreamed. Jack would not go off randomly shooting his way into the Tombs. He wouldn’t have killed Charlie or shot some innocents. He had seen death at his own hand in the past. It was what had brought him to law and away from guns. He wouldn’t repeat those mistakes.